If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ. You'll find answers to the frequently asked questions as well as basic rules. No need to register unless you would like to participate.

You will need to register
before you can post: click the red register link or the register tab, above, right.

The WoodenBoat Forum is sponsored by WoodenBoat Publications, publisher of WoodenBoat magazine since 1974. To get WoodenBoat delivered to your door or computer, mobile device of choice, etc, click WB Subscriptions.

Selling/self promotion postings are verboten on the Forum. To advertise, take a look at WoodenBoat Advertising, or use your Google Adwords account if you want to advertise on the Forum.

Re: An emergent truth

Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you’re in
love, you want to tell the world. This book is a personal statement, reflecting
my lifelong love affair with science.

But there’s another reason: science is
more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of
an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time - when the United States is
a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing
industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological
powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public
interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to
set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when,
clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical
faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s
true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content
in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10
seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous
presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

. . .

We’ve arranged a global civilization in
which most crucial elements - transportation, communications, and all other
industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting
the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting - profoundly
depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost
no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible
mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

For me, there are four main reasons for a concerted effort
to convey science - on radio and TV, in movies, newspapers, books, computer
programs, theme parks and classrooms - to every citizen. In all uses of
science, it is insufficient - indeed it is dangerous - to produce only a small,
highly competent, well-rewarded priesthood of professionals. Instead, some
fundamental understanding of the findings and methods of science must be
available on the broadest scale.

Despite plentiful opportunities for misuse, science can be the
golden road out of poverty and backwardness for emerging nations. It makes
national economies and the global civilization run. Many nations understand
this. It is why so many graduate students in science and engineering at
American graduate schools - still the best in the world - are from other
countries. The corollary, one that the United States sometimes fails to grasp,
is that abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness.

Science alerts us to the perils introduced by our world-altering
technologies, especially to the global environment on which our lives depend.
Science provides an essential early warning system.

Science teaches us about the deepest issues of origins, natures
and fates-of our species, of life, of our planet, of the Universe. For the
first time in human history we are able to secure a real understanding of some
of these matters. Every culture on Earth has addressed such issues and valued
their importance. All of us feel goosebumps when we approach these grand
questions. In the long run, the greatest gift of science may be in teaching us,
in ways no other human endeavour has been able, something about our cosmic
context, about where, when and who we are.

The values of science and the values of democracy are
concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began -
in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the
seventh and sixth centuries BC. Science confers power on anyone who takes the
trouble to learn it (although too many have been systematically prevented from
doing so). Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its
values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points
or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional
opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument,
rigorous standards of evidence and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff
of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism,
against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no
business being. If we’re true to its values, it can tell us when we’re being
lied to. It provides a mid-course correction to our mistakes. The more
widespread its language, rules and methods, the better chance we have of
preserving what Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues had in mind. But democracy
can also be subverted more thoroughly through the products of science than any
pre-industrial demagogue ever dreamed.

Re: An emergent truth

I wouldn't get your hopes up, folks. There have always been enlightened voices amid the din of blind stupidity. Doesn't look like much has improved.

There is no rational, logical, or physical description of how free will could exist. It therefore makes no sense to praise or condemn anyone on the grounds they are a free willed self that made one choice but could have chosen something else. There is no evidence that such a situation is possible in our Universe. Demonstrate otherwise and I will be thrilled.

Re: An emergent truth

Originally Posted by ron ll

The Age of Endarkenment.

Well, there is one good thing about it: via the Bilge, we can be fairly certain that any reasonable and enlightened thread will be responded to by a comment that is so insipid, condescending, smug, obnoxious, and positively STOOPID, as to completely defy logic.

Considering that there are few things in life we can all be certain of, I find this to be somewhat bizarrely reassuring

"Fact is that which enough people believe. Truth is determined by how fervently they believe it."--- Charles Pierce

Self-government requires convincing your fellow citizens. There are many ways to convince people, many involving force, human or supernatural. None of them are legitimate in a popular government. Rationality is demanded if only by default.

There are many positive benefits but with people to whom you have to explain these things it's best to go slowly.

He's a Mexican. -- Donald Trump.
America cannot survive another four years of Barack Obama. -- Governor Chris Christie (R) New Jersey
It wasn't racism, it was an attack on Christianity. -- Fox News
This week, it is Robert E. Lee and this week, Stonewall Jackson. Is it George Washington next? You have to ask yourself, where does it stop?

Re: An emergent truth

I wouldn't get your hopes up, folks. There have always been enlightened voices amid the din of blind stupidity. Doesn't look like much has improved.

As with many things - there is both an arc of history, and an ebb & flow to history.

While it's true that there has been much regression over the last 4+ decades - and esp. over the last 2 - it is also true that a correction is possible. Not only possible, but (I think) likely. As a species, we are hard-wired in certain ways that don't serve us the way they did in eons past. AND we continue to evolve - physically, mentally, and socially - in ways that serve us better. Ebb and flow (and all the half-tides). Black and white (and all the grays). Good and evil. Type1 and Type2 thinking. Etc. Etc.

Re: An emergent truth

Re: An emergent truth

I was helping a friend put bottom paint on and a couple neighbors came over, the conversation drifted around and one guy who's a contractor and boat builder asks, "going to the march on Sat?" , other fellow is a retired entomologist says "of course". There's hope, it only takes a little effort from everyone and we can keep the know nothings contained.

Re: An emergent truth

"Science alerts us to the perils introduced by our world-alteringtechnologies, especially to the global environment on which our lives depend.Science provides an essential early warning system."

In the face of the evidence the process has been reversed, starting from the desired outcome and working backwards to justify it.
No longer being able to dodge the science, has lead to the substitution of belief for reason and science.
Of course all that means is that the inevitable will happen all the sooner and all the more extremely.
No one gets out of this, unless they die first.

Re: An emergent truth

Originally Posted by David G

As with many things - there is both an arc of history, and an ebb & flow to history.

While it's true that there has been much regression over the last 4+ decades - and esp. over the last 2 - it is also true that a correction is possible. Not only possible, but (I think) likely. As a species, we are hard-wired in certain ways that don't serve us the way they did in eons past. AND we continue to evolve - physically, mentally, and socially - in ways that serve us better. Ebb and flow (and all the half-tides). Black and white (and all the grays). Good and evil. Type1 and Type2 thinking. Etc. Etc.

Please don't mistake the present setbacks as permanent.

I do wish that more Americans could get out and see whats happening in the rest of the world, not just the nasty bits that get reported in the papers and on Fox News, the real rest of the world.
Its not perfect out here but it does seem much more hopeful.

Re: An emergent truth

Originally Posted by john welsford

I do wish that more Americans could get out and see whats happening in the rest of the world, not just the nasty bits that get reported in the papers and on Fox News, the real rest of the world.
Its not perfect out here but it does seem much more hopeful.

John Welsford

It's the American Exceptionalist strain in the culture that generates the tension, withdrawal, and apocalyptic thinking. They think they're losing the favor of heaven. Plus it's not cheap going to Mexico or Canada, let alone Europe, Aus, NZ . . .

He's a Mexican. -- Donald Trump.
America cannot survive another four years of Barack Obama. -- Governor Chris Christie (R) New Jersey
It wasn't racism, it was an attack on Christianity. -- Fox News
This week, it is Robert E. Lee and this week, Stonewall Jackson. Is it George Washington next? You have to ask yourself, where does it stop?